December 2014

82 comments:

Re Dec. 1: Oh, brother -- he's back to this again? And insinuating collusion on the part of Teh Skery Neegro, to boot? He must have gotten an Urgent Outrage Reminder e-mail from Fox "news".

Tell you what, Brucie: You devote a week of strips -- hell, a single strip -- to all the specific ways in which this Obamacare "deception" has negatively impacted your life,* and maybe I'll consider listening to what you have to say on the matter of health care reform.

Maybe.

*And no, "Poor people and coloreds are able to get health care and keep sucking up my oxygen instead of having the good grace to die in the streets" doesn't count.

Re Dec. 2: You know, I seem to recall another presidential deception, one perpetrated by the previous occupant of the White House... but unlike Obama's "deception", which resulted in millions more Americans having health care, this other deception resulted in an unnecessary and illegal war, which in turn resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians, as well as the torture of prisoners being declared legal because they were labeled "unlawful enemy combatants" instead of "prisoners of war" (which, it occurs to me, qualifies as a deception within a deception), not to mention America's international reputation and moral credibility being shredded.

Of course, the president who engaged in that deception was a Republican, and he rationalized it on the basis of Keeping Us Safe™, and our Courageous Truth-Teller never said so much as an unkind word about it... which means we must conclude that said Truth-Teller is only opposed to presidential deceptions under very specific circumstances.

Anyway, as I understand it, Gruber worked on Romney's health plan in Massachusetts before doing similar work with the Affordable Care Act, which makes sense because they're basically the same plan. And at one point during the '12 election Willard was trying to sell the notion that it was perfectly fine idea on the state level, but in federal terms it was wrong, so wrong.

Anyway, I'm not sure what Gruber's cynical remark is supposed to prove, but since both policies are working well, I am sure I don't care.

Re Dec. 6: Wow -- he actually stuck with this idiocy for the whole week. Beats working for a living, though, don't it, Bruce?

Forget beating a dead horse -- Bruce Tinsley is more like a soldier* who shows up on the battlefield long after the battle is over and everyone else has moved on, and proceeds to heartily thrash away at the corpses of the enemy soldiers while shouting, "I'm winning! I'm winning! I'm winning the battle!! You're terrified of me, aren't you?! HAH! Take that! And that! Fear my mighty wrath, fools!! Aaah-hahahahaha!!!"

*Not that Bruce would ever be an actual soldier, of course, because armchair warfare is so much safer.

1) Seriously, Bruce? You're launching another week of poutrage over this non-scandal? Congratulations -- you've officially reached a whole new level of pathetic. No one holds a stupid, pointless grudge like a conservative...

2) Anyone who thinks NBC, as represented by Chuck Todd (a.k.a. Chuckles the Clown), is a left-wing water-carrier is unaware that Chuckles has been blithely continuing fellow hack David Gregory's grand tradition of using NBC's flagship current events show Meet the Press to dole out wingnut welfare by the bucketful -- not to mention his stated belief (followed by weaselly responsibility-dodging sophistry) that it's not the media's job to call out the GOP when they lie.

12/9:I'm guessing that even Fox decided Doctor-Gruber-Doom was a lost cause exactly 3 weeks ago, because now it's Santa and a thing that happened 6 months ago. Somebody really misses when all he needed to do was shriek "BENGHAAAAAZI!" a lot to get his paycheck for being so "timely."

I'm back and I wanted to clarify, Obama is a very scary black man. That is why when I go to bed I make sure to kiss my Jesus statue with some deep tongue, grab my 3 shotguns and say a prayer to my Bill O'Reily shrine hoping he blesses my life with his eternal wisdom.

Back to the Jewish,Kenyan,Racist,Communist,Godless,reptoid Obama; Me and my hooded brothers erm my brothers in the holy cloth withh bounce him out and welcome in a decent Republican President who I personally guarantee will eliminate the poverty and class issues with trickle down economics.

I had to go to the ArcaMax site. The fact that I made some little effort to see today's Mallard means I put more work into it that its creator did.

Anyway, Truth To Power Duck sure is sticking it to Big School Fundraiser this week. And after all, if he resents paying one thin dime of taxes to make sure schools don't suck, he's certainly not going to buy some overpriced candy towards that purpose.

Re Dec. 29: In today's installment, Mallard tries to shore up his Serious Journalist street cred >snicker< by embracing the catechism of Both Siderism (h/t Driftglass).

(For those who may be unfamiliar, Both Siderism is the religious doctrine, embraced by pseudo-journalistic hacks everywhere, that every single sociopolitical problem under the sun in America is always equally the fault of The Extremes on Both Sides™, and that the true, correct, and reasonable position is therefore precisely in The Center between those two extremes.)

And it's more than a little telling that Mallard/Bruce only engages in concern-trolling about "the facts" when those facts don't reflect well on him and his preconceived prejudices (see also "Zimmerman, George").

Frank Stone: Both-Siderism also has a secondary purpose, perhaps unintentionally. The only time you'll hear any conservative admit culpability, it will include the important words "on both sides" or "everybody does it."

This is a little bit late, but Tinsley seems to be up to his usual trick of implying that it was Obama who had called voters stupid. Actually, it is official GOP policy to rely on the stupidity of voters, to vote against their own interests.

"If we do a frat-house gang-rape story without checking it out… …and it turns out not to be true… …we're undermining the credibility of true rape allegations!"

Fortunately, this is not at all the case with fraudulent stories of IRS abuses, horrific treason to our troops, and institutional dishonesty. You guys can keep pumping those out forever, and they'll not only be believed over and over, those who believe them will still manage to believe that you're some kind of liberal juggernaut that only says bad things about Democrats when forced by circumstances (an event which happens ten million times per day).

Early January:Here are my New Year predictions:#1. Increased trade dollars, tourism, and information flowing into Cuba will eventually make it more capitalistic and democratic. Give it time. Mallard seems to be against this.

#2. The new Congress and Senate will make a big stink. Hold your noses. It has started already:a. Gifts to Wall Streetb. Gifts to oil companiesc. Gifts to pollutersd. Plans to take access to medical care away from very many.What have they done for you?

Jan. 15Where does this stuff about "Haters" come from? Mallard seems to be obsessed about it. Just because he claims that people, belonging to the demographic groups that he hates, use the expression "haters" does not make it true. (That can be said about every MF strip.) The main evidence for "post-rational America" that I see is from MF, as well as his common sources on information

1/16: I rate this strip "mostly true." While the drawing quality is weak, the same is true of many New Yorker cartoons, and the novelty of having the punch line delivered by what has to be a talking penis gives it the sort of 'edge' the current cartoon editor looks for.

1/17: I have to say, this kind of occasional attempt at humor would fare better if the strip had even so much as a single continuing character with human traits that would cause people to identify with them in some small way. (But what do I know? Nobody's giving me wingnut welfare.)

Re Jan. 20: How very curious, Mallard, that you chose to direct your readers to Mahmood's "satirical piece" in The College Fix, rather than the place where it was first published, the Michigan Review (which, while not technically "the school paper", is certainly affiliated with the school).

1/23 - My dilemma: On the one hand, I wonder what Brews' latest wingnut martyr actually did, that the Tinsh is so avidly avoiding telling us. On the other hand, I'm not going to go looking through the festering cholera swamps where the information may )or may not) lie.

The wingnut mantra, of course, is "do your own research". Because if they honestly and straightforwardly told you, you'd be thoroughly skeeved out.

CW: All you need to know is contained in the two words: "Conservative" "Satire."

And on 1/24, Tinsley continues to pound the thesis that rejecting a mean-spirited piece of amateurish crap is exactly the same as censoring Mark Twain, or anybody else the Tea Party would want dead if they were actually alive now.

Doesn't Brews have a couple of kids? Does he home-school them (yikes)? He seems to have very little understanding of what actually goes on in school. I mean, I get (attempted) satire, but isn't satire supposed to have some connected to the reality people might recognize?

1/28: Bruce and his Tea Party flame are not mature enough for the concept of personal responsibility. Accepting blame for things they've done, are doing, or have announced the intention of doing is so alien to all of them that to their ears, it sounds just like being blamed for things they didn't do.

They can't tell the difference. All that "responsibility" talk is gibberish to them anyway. When it follows a particular formula, they can parrot it. That's about it.

1/29: Mallard wants all you Muslims here to know that since the best treatment you get here is better than the worst treatment you might get in the worst hellhole in the world, you've got it great!

Stop complaining and accept your ongoing harassment as part of a decades-long initiation, after which you'll become social conservatives and do your best to pull up the ladder for anyone who came here later than you did. It's the American Way.

Re Jan. 29: Ahhh, I see what you did there, Mallard -- instead of a blanket denial that there's been any kind of anti-Muslim backlash in America, you've now changed the terms of the debate by saying that there's been no "MASS" anti-Muslim backlash. Way to move the goalposts while the ball was in the air, ducky. I hope you didn't tear your rotator cuff patting yourself on the back for that terribly clever little rhetorical trick.

1/30: The duck who either spends the whole strip staring at a tube or staring at us — the duck who harps on the same tired sawdust day in and day out — wants us to know he's bored with three- and four-syllable words.

2/7 - Mallard has gotten so incoherent it's hard to find anything to respond to. Today's alleged effort is another haphazard collection of buzzwords and elements of talking points - "activists, amirite?" I'd wonder if Brews is emulating his idol Mooselini, except it seems half-hearted even by that measure. And THAT is lazy.

2/11 - And the horrific story about the Muslim family in North Carolina who were shot to death, and evidently targeted because they were Muslim: I'm guessing Captain "All them Mooslims r EEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL!!!!1!!!1!" will have as much to say about that in three weeks as he's had today.

2/17:Wow, Bruce, Michael Moore is Fat and says "America Stinks!" Did your Clinton Blow Job jokes finally go past their sell-by date? This is just as timely as a couple of weeks ago, when you made 2 jokes about Romney running for president after he dropped out. Way to think inside the box and stay behind the curve, Tinny.

The Ultimate Ranking of American Presidents: "36. Mallard Fillmore (1850-1853) - America's second duck president (after Andrew Quackson) and first horrible comic strip president. Mostly rolled his eyes at the unbelievable things those whigs were doing at the time."

3/3:Bruce, you sure have a low tolerance for lazy people watching porn while getting paid! For a guy who has Fox News playing 90 hours a week and then spends 5 minutes rubbing out a crappy comic strip to it.

Also: good (hand) job researching this by parroting your employer's "newspaper." TRUTH TO POWER whoops, don't use that to mop it up, that's your paycheck. And great, this is going to go on all week.

Those people who want Hillary Clinton elected president, so that we could have our first woman president, seem to have learned absolutely nothing from the current disaster of choosing a president on the basis of demographics and symbolism. -- Thomas Sowell

Given that an idiot like Thomas Sowell owes his gig as a wingnut talking head to his being a self-hating African-American, for him to be squawking about demographics and symbolism is pretty rich.

But I have to ask what disaster he thinks he's talking about. The economic free fall of the end of the Shrub era has been reversed. Millions have access to health care who didn't have it before. Osama bin Laden sleeps with the fishes after someone let him run around loose for eight years.

As for who will succeed president Obama, what alternative to Hillary Clinton are the Reeps preparing to offer, yet another Bush? What sort of demographics and symbolism are involved there?

Of course, Anonyboldfont, I see you don't have any actual defense of Mallard Fillmore, the ostensible subject of this space. I will go ahead and invite you to fuck off, however.

Yes, I'm afraid it's true, Bruce: "Mallard Fillmore" long ago passed the point of no return. It is, for all intents and purposes, a dead strip. It is doomed to a future of being nothing but a series of ever-fainter echoes of itself. And not only does this mean that any further critical commentary has become pointless, but it means that the strip's continued existence has likewise become pointless. Why keep infusing temporary breath into an empty shell, knowing that doing so produces not new vitality, but a mockery of life? Putting "Mallard Fillmore" out of its misery has become the most humane option going forward. I know it's painful, but it needs to be done. And once you've been relieved of the mind-numbing drudgery of recycling Fox "News" talking points, you'll be free to pursue an honest line of work, like grave-digging.

With that in mind, I've taken the liberty of writing the script for the final installment of "Mallard Fillmore". The scenario is something of a cliché, I know, but it was the only thing I could think of that would allow the strip as a whole to make anything resembling sense and to shuffle off this mortal coil with something like dignity.

It's here for you, buddy. Whenever you're ready.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Mallard Fillmore" - script for final strip

PANEL ONEExtreme closeup on MALLARD FILLMORE's face. His asymmetrical, zombie-like eyes are open and staring blankly, as usual. The angle suggests he's reclining against a pillow.

PANEL THREEWiden to reveal that we are in a HOSPITAL ROOM. We now see that the just-deceased Mallard is lying in bed, and that the voices belong to a DOCTOR who is shutting down a life-support machine next to the bed and a female NURSE who is pulling a sheet over Mallard's face. A wall-mounted TELEVISION SET faces the bed, tuned to FOX NEWS.

DOCTOR: Hard to believe the poor guy hung on for more than 20 years after slipping into an alcoholic coma.

Perhaps there will always be a place to remind us of whatever nonsense the GOK was barking about three weeks ago, before it was roundly debunked and shown to be fiction. Unless we've found richer sources of topical humor, like My Weekly Reader, of course.

One of my local papers still inflicts duck shit on us, but I've long since concluded, from the lack of objections, that either the good people of Hagerstown, MD, don't notice Mallard or they actively want to be blatantly and hideously lied to. Or maybe they've just accepted, as I have, that changing the minds of people who get their information from Fox so-called News, Mallard Fillmore, Rush Limbaugh, the Republican Party and other right-wing media outlets is like trying to tell a Scientologist that some of his "big wins" are either non-existent or semantically null.

Mallard was finally dropped from the daily comics last week, in the Hampton-Newport New "Daily Press," now Sunday only. Replaced by Pickles and Beatle Bailey, by reader's vote. In a region that seems predominately wrong-wingers.